


And the End is Revealed

by writerforlife



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Gen, about things to come, gansey and ronan have a chat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 07:06:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6319516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerforlife/pseuds/writerforlife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gansey tells Ronan that he is destined to die. Ronan reacts as expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the End is Revealed

Ronan was awake when Gansey got back to Monmouth at three in the morning. He was sprawled out on the couch, his head tipped over the side and his headphones blaring electronic music, and only knew Gansey was back because he tripped over something in the hallway. 

When Gansey strode into the living room, his glasses and pajamas on, Ronan gave him a slight nod and waited for Gansey to nod back so he could close his eyes and go back to not sleeping. However, Gansey just stood in the middle of the floor, absorbing the room but entirely ignoring Ronan. His eyes finally found Ronan and they held eye contact for a few moments before Gansey looked away. He walked over to his miniature model of Henrietta, sat down near the edge of town, and began making what looked like a factory. 

Ronan didn’t close his eyes again. Instead, he turned his head and watched Gansey. There was something uneasy in the way he moved his hands over the cardboard and paper, every movement marked by shaking fingers. He dropped a sheet of paper, and bit down on his lower lip hard. His dark hair was ruffled, like he had been running his hands through it, and his hazel eyes were surrounded by red, swollen rings. The realization that Gansey, Richard Gansey III, had been crying made Ronan sit up. Whoever had made him cry, Ronan was going to beat them until they were barely breathing. The last time someone had been mean to Gansey, Ronan had gotten suspended for a week and the kid had gotten seven stitches. Gansey had tried to make Ronan apologize, but Ronan refused. He wasn’t sorry, so he wouldn’t pretend that he was. Anyone who tried to fuck with Gansey got Ronan instead. 

He didn’t realize he was standing until Gansey looked at him with a piercing gaze. “Why don’t you sit down, Ronan?” he suggested, rather breathless despite the fact that he was sitting. Ronan didn’t sit. Gansey just sighed and turned back to his model of Henrietta, his eyes bright and wet. That’s when Ronan realized that something was truly wrong.

“Where were you, man?” Ronan asked, sitting cross-legged next to Gansey. A lamp filled the room with warm light and illuminated the shadows and angles on Gansey’s face. He looked timeless again, still human but something more at the same time. 

“With Blue at her house,” Gansey replied. He didn’t look Ronan in the eye. For once, he was being evasive. Usually, he was an open book with Ronan. Plus, he had called Blue by her name rather than Jane. Something was not right. 

“Well, what the fuck happened? Did Maggot turn you down?” Ronan asked, half-heartedly trying to joke. “Happens to the best -”

“I’m going to die,” Gansey blurted out, looking at Ronan with wide eyes. The words washed over Ronan, and the entire world was white noise and static except for Gansey’s rounded and calm voice. “I’m on Blue’s death list. It’s going to happen soon. I can feel it.”

Ronan felt like he was falling into a black hole. “But we’re going to stop it,” Ronan heard himself say. “Because that’s what we do, we stop shit like this from happening, we can -”

“Ronan.” Gansey said his name warmly, almost in the way his father used to. Like he had said his name, but he had meant to say, ‘Please, please just be calm and listen to me.’ He took his glasses from his face and rubbed his eyes. “There isn’t anything we can do. It’s fate that -”

“Fuck fate!” Ronan shouted, leaping to his feet. He disrupted a few of the model Henrietta’s buildings, and Gansey set them up again before staring up at Ronan with an owlish gaze. “Fuck fate! Who says you have to die? You aren’t going to fucking die, there’s nothing wrong with you.” At this, Gansey wouldn’t meet his eye, and Ronan pounced on that. “What? Are you not fucking telling me something when your goddamn life is on the fucking line?” Gansey stared at the model Aglionby like it was the most interesting thing in the room, and Ronan wanted to grab him by the shirt and shake him, but he couldn’t do that. Gansey could be beating him to death and he wouldn’t lay a finger on him. Not after everything he’s put him through. 

“Blue’s cursed,” Gansey finally said. Ronan froze. “If she kisses her true love, he dies.”

“And you’re suggesting that you’re her true love?” Ronan snorted, but with one look at how Gansey’s shoulders were slumped and how he held his head in hands, he knew. He supposed that he had always known that she would take him in one way or another, but he had never considered Blue’s kiss being deadly. 

“Fuck,” Ronan whispered. A rage that he hadn’t felt in a very long time bubbled up inside of him. “FUCK!” He punched a wall as hard as he could and felt the sensitive skin of his knuckles split open. 

“Ronan!” Gansey exclaimed, scrambling to his feet. 

“FUCK!” Ronan shouted again, and knocked a pile of textbooks and paper to the ground. They fell with a loud thud and scattered all over the wood floor. He was breathing heavily. “It’s not fucking fair!” He kicked one of the fallen textbook halfway across the room into a table. A lamp crashed to the floor. “It can’t be fucking  _ fate  _ for you to die!” Ronan punched the wall again, causing pain to ripple up his arm. He hoped that he had broken something. However, when he cocked his arm to punch the wall for a third time, something, or rather someone, caught his arm. Ronan looked to his side to see Gansey clutching at his forearm with an iron grip and looking up at him sadly. 

“Stop,” Gansey pleaded, moving Ronan’s arm to his side but not letting go. “Please, just stop.”

Ronan felt his blood go cold. He wrenched his arm free, stomped over to where he kept the keys to his BMW, and left. Gansey didn’t call after him, nor did he follow him. Ronan made sure to slam the door extra hard behind him. Maybe he could break another lamp. 

Ronan climbed into his car and drove off into the darkness at a reckless speed. He could go and see Adam, but then he would have to explain why his fist was split open and why he was near tears.That in mind, he sped past St. Agnes and onto the empty, open roads of Henrietta.

With Kavinsky dead, there wasn’t really anyone to race, or at least no one who would provide Ronan with a challenge great enough to distract him. He satisfied himself by pushing the BMW to go as fast as it could down the barren road. The exhilaration that came with speed rushed through him like a drug, but Ronan didn’t go numb. Instead, pain ate him alive from the inside out, growing and growing until he pulled over to the side of the road. 

Ronan didn’t realize he had been crying until he touched the side of his face and felt wetness. Once he realized that he had started, he couldn’t stop. He laid his head on the steering wheel and let the tears come, sobs shaking his entire body. He rarely cried, but when he did, it was violent and all-consuming. There wasn’t enough energy in him to hit anything, to cause anymore violence. What was the point? It wouldn’t save Gansey. 

Every moment he had spent with Gansey ran through his mind like a film. Meeting him for the first time, thinking he was a stuck-up, pompous bastard to realizing that he wasn’t so bad after all. Taking him to the barns for the first time, watching him shake his father’s hand and tell Matthew about Glendower. Gansey dropping everything and speeding to the Barns the moment he found out Niall was dead just so Ronan wouldn’t have to be so alone. Gansey sitting next to him at the funeral, a hand on his shoulder and handling all the people who came up to talk to Ronan. Gansey sitting by his hospital bed, haggard and unshaven yet still kingly, thinking that he had failed because Ronan had tried to kill himself while really, a dream creature had tried to shred him. Not being able to tell Gansey the truth as Gansey spent sleepless nights searching the Internet for ways to help people who survived a suicide attempt. The version of Gansey he liked best, wild and full of fire and ready for anything the world threw at him. In all of these memories, Gansey had been there for him, had dropped everything for Ronan, had always put him first. And what had he done for Gansey?

Ronan turned the car around and sped back to Monmouth, pushing the BMW to go faster than it ever had before. He had really fucked up. Gansey had told him he was going to die, something that he must be afraid for, and Ronan had run out on him after destroying the living room. The one moment Gansey had truly needed a friend, he had disappeared, leaving him alone. He knew he was a shitty person, he just didn’t know until how shitty he was until that moment. He had to get back to Monmouth. 

The BMW was barely stopped before Ronan leapt out, taking the stairs two at a time and bursting through the front door. “Gansey!” he called, dashing into the living room, short of breath. Sure enough, Gansey was in the living room. The books and papers had been picked up and neatly stacked on the table, and Gansey was standing by the broken lamp with a broom and dustpan. Gansey gave Ronan a tired smile and wave, then went back to sweeping. Ronan wanted to break down crying again. It was so quintessentially Gansey that it hurt, to just pick up the broken pieces without asking for an apology or credit. 

“I…” Ronan started huskily. His throat grew thick. Everything he had planned to say left him. 

“You don’t have to explain,” Gansey said, sweeping the last of the lamp into the dustpan. He emptied the contents of the dustpan into the trash. “I know I just dropped that on you. It’s a lot to take in. How’s your hand?” He walked over to Ronan and took his wrist, running his fingers over the split skin. “I don’t think it’s broken, so that’s good.”

Ronan wrenched his arm away and rubbed his eyes. “Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“You should be mad at me!” Ronan exclaimed. “You told me something really fucking scary, man, and I just ran out on you!”

Gansey shrugged. “I don’t want to be mad.” He sat down and stretched out on the couch. He yawned, looking more tired than Ronan had ever remembered seeing him. 

“And why’s that?” Ronan perched himself on the end of the couch near Gansey’s feet. 

“Well, I figure I may not have much time left. I don’t want to spend it being mad at anyone.” Gansey shifted into a sitting position and smiled a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. 

Ronan dropped his head into his hands. “Fuck, Gansey,” he muttered, feeling tears spring to his eyes again. “Why you?”

“Well, who would you prefer it to be?” Gansey said calmly.

“Anybody else!” Ronan exclaimed angrily. “Literally anybody else in this shithole of a world but you. I don’t care who it is as long as it isn’t you.”

He had caught Gansey off guard. The calm facade he wore so well cracked a little bit, and his lip trembled. Did Gansey really think that Ronan didn’t care?

“Keep up, Dick, I didn’t spend a few years of my life dreaming up special EpiPens for nothing,” Ronan said, trying to sound sarcastic. The tremor in his voice betrayed him. 

“They were dreamt up?” Gansey asked, sounding fascinated. “I didn’t know that.”

“Special recipe. Figured if a bee decided to fuck you up I should be ready with some magic juice.”

“Why do I find them everywhere?”

“Because bees can be everywhere,” Ronan said. To him, it was ridiculously simple, but Gansey looked like he had just announced something monumental. 

“I see,” Gansey replied, and sighed heavily. Gansey yawned again, and Ronan stood up. 

“I’ll let you get some sleep,” Ronan said, and headed off to his room. 

“Will you be able to sleep?” Gansey asked, his own eyes sliding closed quickly for once.

“Eventually.” It wasn’t a lie.

“Good night, then. I’m glad you’re back.” The warmness of Gansey’s voice stayed with Ronan as he laid down in his bed and put his headphones back on. He tried to picture a world after Gansey died, but couldn’t conjure up an image. His death would be bookended by a severe ‘Before’ and ‘After’.

When the sun began to rise, Ronan left his room to find Gansey sleeping on the couch, his legs dangling off the side, his glasses on, and a little bit of drool trailing from the side of his mouth. Ronan gently moved Gansey’s legs onto the couch. Then, he found a blanket on the floor a few feet away and covered him with it. He finally removed his glasses with careful hands and set them on the table beside the couch so Gansey would be able to see them when he woke up.

After all that, Ronan settled in on the arm chair and watched the steady rise and fall of Gansey’s chest. If he had his way, that chest would keep on rising and falling.

“I’m gonna find a way to save you,” Ronan murmured. “You fucking watch me.” 

Sleep took him. 


End file.
